Democrats, take Trump's DACA deal to save some from deportation. By Nolan Rappaport

The White House has released an Immigration Principles and Policies listof things it wants in return for a deal to save the young immigrants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that is being phased out. My hope is that the Democrats will use it as a starting point for negotiations, but that may not happen.

According to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Trump "can't be serious" about reaching a deal when he starts out with proposals that are "anathema" to the Democrats.

That is an interesting comment in view of their support for the Senate’s two major immigration reform bills, both of which were an anathema to the Republicans.

On May 25, 2006, the Senate passed the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, S. 2611. Although it had some bipartisan support, it was opposed by 58 percent of the Senate Republicans.

Then, on June 27, 2013, the Senate passed the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013, S. 744. This one was written by a bipartisan group of eight senators known as the “Gang of Eight,” but it was opposed by 70 percent of the Senate Republicans.

About the author. Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an executive branch immigration law expert for three years; he subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years.

Comments

If the Democrats were willing to give up more than fifty years of progress in accepting legal immigrants from all over the world by abolishing the landmark 1965 immigration reform law and agreeing to some version of the RAISE Act, which would take this country a long part of the way back to the Europeans-only immigration law of 1924 (which Adolf Hitler and Jeff Sessions both wrote about favorably, some 90 years apart), then they would need mental health counseling even more than Republican Senator Bob Corker (TN) and Republican columnist Jennifer Rubin (writing in the October 9 Washington Post) think that the president does.

Rubin, who has been a loyal and faithful Republican supporter and advocate for as long as she has been writing columns, writes the following about Trump's fitness for the presidency:

"Republicans need for once to put aside tribal loyalty and think constructively about how to secure the country's safety and survival."

If the president cannot be trusted with nuclear codes, as Rubin doubts that he can, can he be trusted to work out a fair and humane immigration compromise with the Democrats that would be something other than just a return to the pre-1965 white supremacist, Europeans-only immigration regime that people such as Steve Miller and Trump's other Alt-Right supporters and advisers have been promoting for a long time?

Despite my above comments, if Trump were willing to accept funding for 47 miles only of border fence as part of a comprehensive DACA deal, I would agree with Nolan that the Democrats would be wise to go along with that.

Given Trump's overall actions regarding non-white, non-European immigrants, legal and otherwise, since becoming president, the chances of his being willing to accept 47 miles of fence only, however, are probably only slightly less than the chances of his requesting funding to build a network of mosques along the border instead of a Wall.

Despite my above comments, if Trump were willing to accept funding for 47 miles only of border fence as part of a comprehensive DACA deal, I would agree with Nolan that the Democrats would be wise to go along with that.

The chances of Trump's being willing to accept 47 of fence miles only are only slightly less than the chances of his requesting funding to build a network of mosques along the border instead of a Wall.

Roger Algase
Attorney at Law

The deal I am proposing wouldn't require Trump to agree that he would only build 47 miles of his wall. I said he would get funding to finish the 47 miles remaining of the 700 miles mandated by the bipartisan Fence Act of 2006 that Hillary and Obama both voted for when they were senators. He would be expected to report back to congress when he finished the project. His report would indicate how successful he had been and provide a reliable basis for estimating the cost of putting a wall along the entire Southwest border. All this is in my article. Congress would then decide whether to fund additional lengths of wall.

Even if the funding for 47 miles of border fence is open ended, I don't see why the Democrats or anyone else should have a problem with that if it will help produce a fair DACA deal.

Nor is there any good reason, at least in principle, to oppose more effective interior immigration enforcement as a quidpro quo for a DACA compromise - which should not necessarily have to include a pathway to citizenship.

With genuine good will on both sides, a reasonable compromise should, at least in theory, not be beyond the bounds of possibility.

But throwing out 50 years of progress toward racial equality in legal immigration, which is in effect what enacting the RAISE Act would be doing by repealing the 1965 immigration reforms and going back to a system that is stacked in favor of European immigrants, whether one calls it a "point system" now, or one called it a "national origins" quota system almost 100 years ago, should not be on the table at all.

Anyone who is interested in a real compromise on immigration that would help the DREAMERS, not just a return to the whites-only pre-1965 immigration system disguised as a "point system', which is in essence what the RAISE Act that Trump strongly supports really is, would do well to begin with the proposals of a moderate Republican, Senator Tillis (N.C.), joined by two other Republican Senators, Hatch and Lankford, which combine rigorous enforcement with a recognition that legal foreign workers, including less skilled ones, benefit the economy, rather than hurting American workers.

While Trump has railed and fumed against legal foreign workers as both candidate and president, he has recognized the value of less skilled immigrant workers in his own businesses by, to give just one example, sponsoring dozens of H-2B immigrants to work at his Florida resorts.

There used to be an old saying dating, if my memory is correct, from the Eisenhower era, that:

"What is good for General Motors is good for the country."

If H-2B unskilled workers are good for Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, aren't they also good for America, even though they would be barred by the RAISE Act, if it ever become the basis for a deal to save some of the DREAMERS, as Nolan suggests it should?

Even if the funding for 47 miles of border fence is open ended, I don't see why the Democrats or anyone else should have a problem with that if it will help produce a fair DACA deal.

Nor is there any good reason, at least in principle, to oppose more effective interior immigration enforcement as a quidpro quo for a DACA compromise - which should not necessarily have to include a pathway to citizenship.

With genuine good will on both sides, a reasonable compromise should, at least in theory, not be beyond the bounds of possibility.

But throwing out 50 years of progress toward racial equality in legal immigration, which is in effect what enacting the RAISE Act would be doing by repealing the 1965 immigration reforms and going back to a system that is stacked in favor of European immigrants, whether one calls it a "point system" now, or one called it a "national origins" quota system almost 100 years ago, should not be on the table at all.

Anyone who is interested in a real compromise on immigration that would help the DREAMERS, not just a return to the whites-only pre-1965 immigration system disguised as a "point system', which is in essence what the RAISE Act that Trump strongly supports really is, would do well to begin with the proposals of a moderate Republican, Senator Tillis (N.C.), joined by two other Republican Senators, Hatch and Lankford, which combine rigorous enforcement with a recognition that legal foreign workers, including less skilled ones, benefit the economy, rather than hurting American workers.

While Trump has railed and fumed against legal foreign workers as both candidate and president, he has recognized the value of less skilled immigrant workers in his own businesses by, to give just one example, sponsoring dozens of H-2B immigrants to work at his Florida resorts.

There used to be an old saying dating, if my memory is correct, from the Eisenhower era, that:

"What is good for General Motors is good for the country."

If H-2B unskilled workers are good for Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, aren't they also good for America, even though they would be barred by the RAISE Act, if it ever become the basis for a deal to save some of the DREAMERS, as Nolan suggests it should?

Roger Algase
Attorney at Law

Roger, you have restored my optimism about bringing the two parties together. The first part of your comment indicates that even the most extreme Trump haters can calm down and consider the possibility of a reasonable compromise that might be acceptable to both parties.

You seem to be underestimating the potential of a point system. The two parties would negotiate the system and assign values to the various things that form the basis for the score. It doesn't have to be slanted to limit admissions to high skilled workers or any other group.

I suggested it as a way to reduce the number of undocumented aliens who would qualify for the program in a rational way. If the Dems hold out for the aliens who would be able to qualify under Pelosi's choice, the DREAM Act of 2017, the number of participants could reach 3,400,000. That is a deal killer.

Nolan says that a "point system" doesn't have to be limited to high skilled immigration, thereby eliminating or drastically reducing the main sources of non-European immigration such as family visas or less-skilled worker visas.

Of course it doesn't - in theory. But the particular point system that the White House is now insisting on as the price for helping any DREAMERS at all is the one in the RAISE Act, which is heavily skewed toward white, European immigrants.

If one will forgive a pun here, that is the POINT of the whole POINT System in the RAISE Act.

Again to make an analogy with the 1924 Johnson Reed Immigration Act which barred most most of the world's immigrants from the US except those from the "Nordic" countries of Western Europe, thereby earning Adolf Hitler's admiration; and, which, according to the consensus of historians, added to the death toll of Jewish Holocaust victims.

Adopting "national origins" immigration quotas did not in and of itself bar most Jewish, Italian, Eastern European Asian, African and Middle Eastern immigrants from American for the coming 40 years - it was the way that the quotas were fixed.

Germany, for example, had a quota of about 50,000 US immigrants per year under this law. Russia and other Eastern European countries where most of the world's Jews (and many of its Catholics) lived, on the other hand, were given quotas amounting to only small fractions of the ones for Germany, Britain and other "Nordic" countries.

The quota for India, for example, was only 100 (one hundred!) US immigrants per year. Same for China, Japan. and almost every other country in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

The RAISE Act would accomplish a similar purpose, namely drastically reducing non -European immigration, by manipulating the allotment of points, rather than by skewing the national origins quotas, as was that case almost 100 years ago.

Nolan's argument that a point system is race-neutral in principle and open to negotiation on the details may be true in theory. Canada, for example has an immigration point system which has at the same time welcomed immigrants from many parts of the world
s and made its society more diverse.

But that is not the point system of the RAISE Act and the Trump administration, which is specifically designed to exclude as many non-European legal immigrants as possible (and slash overall immigration totals, as Trump's white nationalist supporters have also been advocating for a long time).

Just as Nolan did in his articles on the Muslim ban executive orders, where Nolan took the "terror sponsor list" justification seriously, even though the administration has now abandoned that pretext in its latest version of the order and substituted a different one, namely "extreme vetting" instead, as its rationale for putting mainly exclusively Muslim countries - including Chad, an important US ally in the fight against the jihadist terror group Boko Haram on the banned country list - Nolan is mistaking the facade for the reality.

Hopefully, one might even speculate that Trump's "erratic" personality and tendency to pick fights with his own natural supporters in his own party might even eventually derail the bigoted, white supremacist RAISE Act.

Along this line, a blog report (in The Hill) quotes a normally Trump-friendly Fox News host, Neil Cavuto, as saying the following about the president, concerning his latest personal feud, this time with GOP Senator Corker:
It's not that some of your [Trump's] ideas aren't sound. they are...It's that, increasingly this erratic behavior makes me wonder whether you are."

More and more Americans will need to ask them selves whether Trump's penchant for supporting and implementing immigration policies based on his often expressed hostility and contempt for non-white immigrant groups could be a reflection of his own personal mental health challenges.

Nolan says that a "point system" doesn't have to be limited to high skilled immigration, thereby eliminating or drastically reducing the main sources of non-European immigration such as family visas or less-skilled worker visas.

Of course it doesn't - in theory. But the particular point system that the White House is now insisting on as the price for helping any DREAMERS at all is the one in the RAISE Act, which is heavily skewed toward white, European immigrants.

If one will forgive a pun here, that is the POINT of the whole POINT System in the RAISE Act.

Again to make an analogy with the 1924 Johnson Reed Immigration Act which barred most most of the world's immigrants from the US except those from the "Nordic" countries of Western Europe, thereby earning Adolf Hitler's admiration; and, which, according to the consensus of historians, added to the death toll of Jewish Holocaust victims.

Adopting "national origins" immigration quotas did not in and of itself bar most Jewish, Italian, Eastern European Asian, African and Middle Eastern immigrants from American for the coming 40 years - it was the way that the quotas were fixed.

Germany, for example, had a quota of about 50,000 US immigrants per year under this law. Russia and other Eastern European countries where most of the world's Jews (and many of its Catholics) lived, on the other hand, were given quotas amounting to only small fractions of the ones for Germany, Britain and other "Nordic" countries.

The quota for India, for example, was only 100 (one hundred!) US immigrants per year. Same for China, Japan. and almost every other country in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

The RAISE Act would accomplish a similar purpose, namely drastically reducing non -European immigration, by manipulating the allotment of points, rather than by skewing the national origins quotas, as was that case almost 100 years ago.

Nolan's argument that a point system is race-neutral in principle and open to negotiation on the details may be true in theory. Canada, for example has an immigration point system which has at the same time welcomed immigrants from many parts of the world
s and made its society more diverse.

But that is not the point system of the RAISE Act and the Trump administration, which is specifically designed to exclude as many non-European legal immigrants as possible (and slash overall immigration totals, as Trump's white nationalist supporters have also been advocating for a long time).

Just as Nolan did in his articles on the Muslim ban executive orders, where Nolan took the "terror sponsor list" justification seriously, even though the administration has now abandoned that pretext in its latest version of the order and substituted a different one, namely "extreme vetting" instead, as its rationale for putting mainly exclusively Muslim countries - including Chad, an important US ally in the fight against the jihadist terror group Boko Haram on the banned country list - Nolan is mistaking the facade for the reality.

Hopefully, one might even speculate that Trump's "erratic" personality and tendency to pick fights with his own natural supporters in his own party might even eventually derail the bigoted, white supremacist RAISE Act.

Along this line, a blog report (in The Hill) quotes a normally Trump-friendly Fox News host, Neil Cavuto, as saying the following about the president, concerning his latest personal feud, this time with GOP Senator Corker:
It's not that some of your [Trump's] ideas aren't sound. they are...It's that, increasingly this erratic behavior makes me wonder whether you are."

More and more Americans will need to ask them selves whether Trump's penchant for supporting and implementing immigration policies based on his often expressed hostility and contempt for non-white immigrant groups could be a reflection of his own personal mental health challenges.

Roger Algase
Attorney at Law

My relief was short lived. Roger has returned to his gloom-and-doom-Trump-hating-fantasies.

I didn't propose a point system established in the White House or by the authors of the RAISE Act. My proposal was a point system negotiated by the two parties. And the purpose would be to bring the DACA program down to a number that would be acceptable to both parties --- because a program that would give lawful status to almost three and a half million undocumented aliens (Pelosi's proposal) has no chance of moving through congress.

If Roger doesn't like that method, perhaps he can suggest one that he would like.

"I didn't propose a point system established by the White House or the authors of the RAISE Act."

If that was not what he meant, why did he begin his article with the title:

"Democrats, take Trump's deal to save some from deportation."?

And why do his opening two sentences say that the Democrats should be willing to use the "White House immigration Policies and Principles list" as a basis for negotiations?

Isn't the RAISE Act's point system, which almost every immigration analyst acknowledges is heavily skewed toward immigration from Europe and would drastically limit immigration from other parts of the world, where family reunification and low skilled immigration have helped to bring tens of millions of non-white legal immigrants to the US over the past half century, a key part of Trump's list of "Principles and Policies" and a major component of whatever deal Trump and his dwindling number of Congressional allies might be willing to discuss with the Democrats?

Nolan now argues that the RAISE Act does not necessarily have to be a basis for negotiations, but all the parties need to discuss is the details of a point system in the abstract.

But what is the purpose of Trump's sudden interest in using a "point system" to replace a 50-year old legal immigration system which has dramatically changed the demographic makeup of America from one of clear white, English-speaking, Judeo-Christian (some of Trump's white nationalist and neo-Nazi supporters would be very happy to leave out the "Judeo", though the president himself is not anti-Semitic) dominance to a much more racially, religiously and linguistically diverse society?

It is not because of any inherent value of a point system in the abstract that Nolan (or Trump) can point to that suddenly makes Trump such a big fan of it, even though different, less racially skewed versions of a point system have have admittedly worked well in some countries, such as Canada.

It is clear that when Trump and his supporters are talking about a point system, they are using it simply as a pretext to reduce ot cut off immigration from non-white parts of the world.

How can that be any basis for serious negotiations on a deal to help some DACA immigrants (not the exaggerated number that Nolan accuses Nancy Pelosi of supporting - a typical "Red Herring" argument)?

Nolan asks what I would propose as a basis for discussion on preserving some form of DACA if the Trump's "Policies and Principles", which include the RAISE Act are taken off the table.

My answer would be that there are a great many issues that could be discussed - enforcement, fraud detection, genuine anti-terrorism methods as opposed to the blatant religious prejudice of his Muslim ban orders; and which the Democrats should be willing to compromise on - they lost the election, after all, and the other party is in control.

But destroying a legal immigration system which has brought America much closer to its ideal of racial equality over the past 50 years and replacing it with one which would take this country a long way back toward the bigoted days of Europe-only immigration which we had starting almost 100 years ago (if not before then) should not be on the table as a basis for discussion.

If Trump insists on using the RAISE Act, or anything resembling it, as a basis for negotiations, that would be equivalent to saying that he is not interested on making any deal at all to help any DACA recipients at all, no matter how small the number of people affected might actually be.

Rogers says, Nolan says in his last last comment above:"I didn't propose a point system established by the White House or the authors of the RAISE Act."If that was not what he meant, why did he begin his article with the title:"Democrats, take Trump's deal to save some from deportation.”?

I don’t write the titles for my articles.

Roger says, “It is clear that when Trump and his supporters are talking about a point system, they are using it simply as a pretext to reduce ot cut off immigration from non-white parts of the world.”

Yes, Trump does want to use a point system to reduce immigration.

Roger says, “How can that be any basis for serious negotiations on a deal to help some DACA immigrants (not the exaggerated number that Nolan accuses Nancy Pelosi of supporting - a typical "Red Herring" argument)?’

It’s not a red hearing. According to the Migration Policy Institute estimates, potentially 3,338,000 aliens would be able to qualify for conditional lawful status under H.R.3440, which is the DREAM Act Pelosi is insisting on.

Roger says, “Nolan asks what I would propose as a basis for discussion on preserving some form of DACA if the Trump's "Policies and Principles", which include the RAISE Act are taken off the table.”

That’s not what I asked. I said the DREAM Act Pelosi wants would provide lawful status for too many people and asked how he would reduce the number if he finds a point system unacceptable.

Once again, Nolan is trying to turn the discussion away from the main issue, which is that Trump is proposing a point system which would not only reduce all legal immigration significantly (as Nolan acknowledges), but would be skewed in favor of white, European immigrants as opposed to immigrants from non-white areas of the world.

This would be a major return in the direction of the openly racist, "Nordics" - only 1924 immigration law which was predicated on the pseudo-scientific theory that some "races" of people were genetically superior to others, with white northern Europeans being at the top, and, in the view of Adolf Hitler, an ardent admirer of the 1924 American law, Jews on the bottom.

We all know where that kind of thinking led to. Today's proposed RAISE Act, of course, is not directed against Jews and Trump is not in any way anti-semitic.

But the unspoken, but clearly underlying premise in the RAISE Act that immigrants from Europe are better for America than those from other parts of the world, a premise that was also the basis of Trump's recent Warsaw speech, is antithetical to the core values of America, namely that all people are created equal.

This value also underscores the immigration system that America has had for the past 50 years and which the RAISE Act's point system would abolish.

Instead of dealing with this fundamental issue, Nolan is raising Nancy Pelosi's alleged insistence on not only saving DACA for nearly 800,000 young, mainly Latino, young people who would lose everything because of Trump's cancellation of the program, but on extending it to more than 3 million people in total as a diversion.

If Nolan's description of Nancy Pelosi's alleged unwillingness to consider any alternative is accurate, and I do not know what Nolan's basis is for this claim, then my advice to Pelosi and the Democrats would be to save as many current Dreamers from deportation as they can by taking the best deal they can get from the other side, but not to accept any deal at the price of agreeing to the, bigoted, Europeans-only, legal immigration point system of the RAISE Act under any circumstances.

In summary, to the extent that Nolan is arguing in favor of flexibility on both sides in any DACA negotiations, I entirely agree with him, with the only exception that the RAISE Act, or anything resembling it which would discriminate against non-European legal immigrants whatever the pretext, should be off the table for discussion.

In fairness to supporters of the RAISE Act, there is an argument to be made that its effect would be according to class rather than ethnicity. As EB-5 practitioners are well aware, in Asian counties such as China and India, among others, there is a highly educated, English-speaking wealthy elite consisting of millions of people who might have no difficulty qualifying under the RAISE Act.

This would bring America's immigration system more in line with Trump's (and much of his party's) domestic agenda of huge tax breaks and deregulation for the rich and gutting health care, social security, labor union and environmental protections for everyone else.

From this perspective, America's immigration system, instead of being based on ethnicity as it was before 1965, would, arguably, be based on plutocracy instead.